Another great snapper season is nearly over with the majority of fish caught in the 1.5-3kg range.

This year I found that the fish were more concentrated and in big numbers. Once you located the fish, you caught your bag of three over 40cm very quickly and you were back home in time for early breakfast. However the current bag limit of seven fish under 40cm and three fish over 40cm seems very confusing to a lot of anglers. Whenever I ask people what the bag limit for snapper is, most would say you could have 10 over 40cm. Make sure you know the regs before heading out.

All the local beaches are reporting mixed bags of fish with salmon up to 2kg being caught. Also mixed in has been a bit more variety with mullet, tommy ruff, flathead, pinkie snapper and even the odd whiting being caught, especially if you are fishing a gutter that runs along a section of reef. Fishing early morning or late evening could surprise with some nice pinkies and whiting. Squid strips will work a treat.

Below the bridge and outside the entrance between 40-70m line the blue logs and makos have shown up. The trick is to work out which way you are going to drift so as you either start at the 70m line and drift in or start at the 40m line and drift out. Once you start your drift keep the berley trail going and persist on the one drift line. Your chance of success will be greatly improved if you don’t move around.

Above the bridge and both the San Remo and Newhaven jetties have been producing pinkie snapper to 2kg and some nice calamari which is good news to holiday pier anglers.

Whiting are coming in from all over the bay. There seems to be two distinct sizes of fish being caught, size one are 26-31cm and then 36-40cm which are good solid fish. You might have to move around till you locate the bigger fish but when you do its well worth it.

Snapper are still being caught but they have definitely slowed down. It seems that some of the bigger fish have moved further up the bay with some good reports coming in from Temby Point and Lang Lang.

Reports of good whiting are coming in from Cat Bay, Ventnor, Balnarring and Somers areas with a monster fish of 1.8kg reported being caught in the deep water off Cowes.

Part of a good bag of whiting caught off Tortoise Head by Ben, Pierre and Marco.